Couldn’t do this blog for some days… out of town. Here is a poem from my 2007 book Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky:
Name Your Poison
Apple morsel
choked Snow White
Belladonna, called the witch.
Bloodroot floods the forest,
cousin to monkshood, Jack in the Pulpit,
companion to crowfoot,
dogbane, devils’trumpet,
deadly orchestra.
Back home,
the medicine cabinet
carries Dilantin, Digitalis,
Chloroform.
In the kitchen,
Warm wood cabinet under the sink
hides Drano, lye, bleach.
In the far corner of the basement
grey peeling shelf
supports arsenic, strychnine, malathion.
Sun flecked garden
flaunts Colchium, Lobelia;
Far corner of the back yard
shades Lily of the Valley, Bleeding Heart, Larkspur.
Yellow stains skin
heartbeat stutters ,starved of air,
Muscles freeze, tongue burns
Fierce convulsions, pressure plummets.
Thick blue glass bottle glints
on the counter
in an old apothecary shop.
We want it to kill a rat,
said the youngest of the three revelers.
Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky 